Column:

General education requirements need to change

By Jordan Paul

Published March 19, 2010

MU is conducting a review of the general education requirements that each student must complete in order to graduate.

Although the committee in charge of this ought to consider proposals, such as the diversity-intensive course requirement, it ought not require courses that are unnecessary. In the status quo, students are required to complete 15 hours of study that feature college algebra, an additional math proficiency course, English exposition and argumentation, an additional writing intensive course and American history or government. In addition to this base, we have the distribution of content requirement, which is a collection of 27 hours evenly distributed across the hard sciences (biological, physical and/or mathematical), behavior and/or social sciences and the humanities and/or fine arts.

Now, as I'm sure you're aware, after MU's requirements have been fulfilled, your individual college will probably levy additional requirements. For instance, the College of Arts and Science chooses to require a second writing-intensive course and twelve to 13 hours of foreign language, adding a semester's worth of class to the three that have been required by MU at large. In case you don't excel at math, this means a student has little control over two year's worth of his or her supposed four-year education. In a related (albeit somewhat different) vein, students in the College of Business are no doubt aware of the dozens of hours they must complete before they are able to focus on their emphasis. Finally, after all of these requirements have been completed, you might be able to start studying something that you want.

For example, I'm an Arts and Science man. After finishing all my university and college general education requirements, I was able to start in on the 30ish hours it would take to acquire my degree. So, assuming I habitually completed 15 hours, I theoretically could make it through with some time to spare. Naturally, this assumes I never had to retake a class, rarely took less than 12 hours and, perhaps most notably, didn't suffer if I changed my major. Although I never switched majors, a lot of people don't have this experience. For instance, my brother, who is a sophomore, moved through the College of Arts and Science and the College of Business before finding his present course of studies in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. Unfortunately, some of the credits from his earlier studies don't apply to his current track, and it will be very hard for him to graduate in four years.

Essentially, my point is that the three-tier structure of university, college and department creates too much in general education requirements for students.

In Europe, most courses of study focus on one discipline for several years, rather than the broad set of requirements that we have in America. I understand the principal of being well-rounded, but this limits students from specializing. Wouldn't our graduates be more competitive in the workplace if they were able to tailor their course of study to their interests and potential career field?

I'm essentially proposing the flexibility of the interdisciplinary studies degree (which, by the way, is laughable at its current length) with a greater depth of study. It would've been nice to have the ability to take classes more pertinent to my future rather than general education requirement that will have little to no impact on my profession.

We're studying at MU for a reason; it isn't supposed to be high school. Establish reasonable and relevant requirements for graduation and let students decide the rest.